Morgan Wienberg was unfazed by the cheers coming from the bar on the other side of Wood-n-Tap each time the Red Sox moved one base closer to the championship; without so much as a pause, she continued telling the Torah on Tap group about the work she has done in Haiti to reunite children with their parents.
Wienberg, originally from Whitehorse, moved to Haiti almost immediately after graduating from high school; while spending five months living in a for-profit orphanage, she began to notice the children there were being exploited and abused. When people would donate shoes, she said, there would be a big show about it, but after the donors left, the children would again be in their bare feet and the shoes would be sold for the personal gain of the orphanage’s owner. Wienberg learned Creole quickly and began to find out from the children that not only were they abused when she was not present, but that many of them had living parents, some only twenty minutes away. Because of the extreme poverty, some families found hope in sending their children off to such orphanages, as these places promise better lives and educations. The reality, Wienberg said, was that children were not even given food to eat beyond rice on some days.
That was in 2011.
Since then, with Little Footprints, Big Steps, a charitable organization co-founded by Morgan Wienberg and Sarah Wilson, 65 children have been reunited with their families. Some of those youth had been living in that orphanage, others had been on the streets. One of the issues in removing children from these neglectful and abusive environments is that there is often no place for them to go. The organization has opened a “safehouse” that serves as a halfway point between orphanage or the street and being back with families.
Wienberg says she has been working with the authorities to try to shut down that abusive orphanage where she saw children living in poor conditions firsthand, but there have been a few snags– the owner gets tipped off and disappears whenever police show up, and, this is not the only troubled orphanage like this. Wienberg told the twenty young(ish) adults that there are hundreds of exploitative orphanages like this one in Haiti.
Currently, Wienberg is spending some time in North America to build up support for her organization. She says she hopes to expand beyond Haiti. To find out more about Little Footprints, Big Steps, see the website and blog.
This summer a group from Congregation Beth Israel — just over the line into West Hartford — will be returning to Haiti to help build a house for one of the families involved in Little Footprints, Big Steps.